514 / PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1779. 



or producing harmony on an instrument so early, have never come to my 

 knowledge. 



The arts being governed by laws built on such productions and effects as the 

 most polished part of mankind have long agreed to call excellent, can make but 

 small approaches towards perfection in a state of nature, however favourable may 

 be the disposition of those who are supposed to be gifted with an uncommon 

 tendency towards their cultivation. Nature never built a palace, painted a pic- 

 ture, nor made a tune : these are all works of art. And with respect to archi- 

 tecture and music, there are no models in nature which can encourage imitation: 

 and though there is a wild kind of music among savages, where passion vents 

 itself in lengthened tones different from those of speech, yet these rude effusions 

 can afford no pleasure to a cultivated ear, nor would be honoured in Europe with 

 any better title than the bowlings of animals of an inferior order to mankind. 



All therefore that is really admirable in early attempts at music is the power 

 of imitation ; for elegant melody and good harmony can only be such as far as 

 they correspond with or surpass their models ; and as melody consists in the 

 happy arrangement of single sounds, and harmony in the artificial combination 

 and simultaneous use of them, an untaught musician becomes the inventor of 

 both ; and those who are at all acquainted with the infancy of such melody and 

 harmony as constitute modern music, can alone form an idea of the rude state 

 of both when an individual discovers them by the slow process of experiment. 

 Every art when first discovered seems to resemble a rough and shapeless mass of 

 marble just hewn out of a quarry, which requires the united and successive en- 

 deavours of many labourers to form and polish. The zeal and activity of a 

 single workman can do but little towards its completion ; and in music the 

 undirected efforts of an infant must be still more circumscribed ; for, without 

 the aid of reason and perseverance, he can only depend on memory and a pre- 

 mature delicacy and acuteness of ear for his guides ; and in these particulars the 

 child of whom I am going to speak is truly wonderful. 



Wm. Crotch was born at Norwich, July 5, 1775- His father, by trade a car- 

 penter, having a passion for music, of which however he had no knowledge, un- 

 dertook to build an organ, on which, as soon as it would speak, he learned to 

 play 2 or 3 common tunes, with which, and such chords as were pleasing to his 

 ear, he used to try the perfection of his instrument. About Christmas 1776, 

 when the child was only a year and a half old, he discovered a great inclination 

 for music, by leaving even his food to attend to it when the organ was playing : 

 and about Midsummer 1777 he would touch the key-note of his particular fa- 

 vourite tunes, in order to persuade his father to play them. Soon after this, as 

 he was unable to name these tunes, he would play the 2 or 3 first notes of them, 

 when he thought the key-note did not sufficiently explain which he wished to 

 have played. 



